Monday, August 22, 2016

[DMANET] [job] Post-doc position on Collective Response in Self-Organizing Systems available at UTC (Compiegne - France)

A fully-funded 1 year (renewable for at least another year, contingenton performance) postdoc position in self-organizing systems isavailable at the Laboratory of Excellence (LABEX) at the Université deTechnologie de Compiègne (UTC) in France (www.utc.fr/labexms2t).

The successful candidate will work with Dr. Eliseo Ferrante onexciting topics at the interface between self-organized artificiallife, robotics systems and statistical physics. The Postdoc positionis expected to start in Fall 2016 or later (flexible) and is openuntil filled.

Project description:

Our lab considers self-organizing systems from a uniqueinterdisciplinary point of view that combines artificial life,engineering, statistical physics, and biology. We study how variousbiological and technological components can collectively achievecomplex dynamics using only simple rules and no centralized control.Examples include bird flocks, insect and robot swarms, and bacteriacolonies coordinating to achieve collective motion.

One of the fundamental challenges of self-organizing systems is theintegration of local and global dynamics. While individual componentsare mainly linked to local sensing and actuation, coherent globalresponses are required for the organism or group to perform andsurvive collectively. In order to achieve this collective response,those systems need to have correlations in at least some of theirindividual state variables that scale up with the system's size.Various processes may provide mechanisms for this coherent collectiveresponse. For example, the addition of few long-range interactions isenough to produce integrated dynamics in small-world networks.Furthermore, in absence of long-range interactions, systems in acritical state (between order and disorder) naturally displaylong-range correlations that can achieve coherent system-leveldynamics. Finally, there could also be other types of interactionmodes responsible for reaching coherent collective response.

The project undertaken by the candidate will be focused onunderstanding self-organizing system that must simultaneously managelocal and organism-level dynamics. The candidate will study systems inwhich a collective response is generated at the collective scale, as afunction of stimuli that are exerted at the local scale. The candidatewill explore whether this property is already present in existingself-organization mechanisms, and potentially develop novel models inwhich collective response is generated by the interplay between threedifferent mechanisms: small-world topologies, criticality, andself-organization. Potential applications include collectiveexploration and surveillance with technological devices such asdrones, which will take advantage of this collective response in orderto have a fast reaction to a discovered resource.

The candidate will be using tools such as multi-agent simulations andmathematical models to study collective systems with different typesof interaction patterns. She or he will focus on scenarios whereglobal and local dynamics needs to be integrated in a group of agents,in order to achieve specific collective goals involving collectiveresponse, such as: mapping an unknown environment, achievingcollective response to the discovery of a feature in the environment,performing dynamic agent re-allocation in the environment, etc … Inorder to do so, the candidate will focus on analyzing the interplaybetween the different mechanisms able to achieve collective response,in order to find which configuration is best for each scenario.

Candidate's profile:

The candidate must have earned a Doctorate degree in computer science,statistical physics, complex systems, or relevant disciplines, andmust be self-motivated and able to work autonomously.

The candidate is expected to be proficient in programming languagessuch as Python, Java, C++ and to have solid knowledge of scientificsoftware packages such as Matlab, R, Mathematica. The candidates musthave experience with large-scale multi-agent simulations, andfamiliarity with mathematical modeling of collective systems usingseveral techniques (ODEs, mean field approximations, chemical reactionnetworks, Fokker-Planck equations, Langevin equations, etc …) willdefinitely be a plus.

Candidates with an interdisciplinary background that are interested inquestions at the interface between science and engineering will behighly preferred.

Fluent English (written and spoken) is required, and only applicationsin English will be accepted. Above all, the applicants must bemotivated, autonomous, and able to learn quickly and work effectivelyon challenging research problems.

- Curriculum vitae- At least two references and/or recommendation letters- A statement of research experience and interests- Publication record stating impact factor (if present) and number of citations

For any informal enquiry about the eligibility conditions, as well asfor more details about the position, please contact Eliseo Ferrante<eliseo.ferrante@hds.utc.fr>.

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